Side hustles for many people have become a necessity because sometimes, your main hustle doesn’t pay the bills. We spoke to Edith about her opinion on side hustles and her experience as a Nigerian Lawyer.
Tell me about yourself.
I’m Edith Mba, a banking and financial services Lawyer. Outside of work, I like to describe myself as friendly and easygoing.
Nice. When did you know that you wanted to become a Lawyer?
I don’t think I ever had that eureka ‘oh, I want to be a Lawyer’ moment; it was a convenient choice at the time, and I passed all my exams up to law school level, and I guess it just happened.
What’s your best and worst thing about your job?
The best thing is the learning curve; studying law teaches you how to be a problem solver. Law is multidimensional, and you get to work on many different things.
That sounds interesting.
Yeah. Well, the worst thing is that it’s not as flexible as some other jobs, and things are done a certain way, so there isn’t much room for innovation. But that’s just my perspective.
How do you balance your love for tech and law? It’s been interesting balancing both. Balancing both hasn’t been easy because I have to be intentional about my interests in tech, stay on top of trends and events, and educate myself on the topics that interest me. Tech, for me, is an area of interest as my day Job doesn’t Involve a lot of tech. But there’s tech in everything these days, and the media is buzzing about tech, so it’s easier to keep up.
Speaking of balancing both, what’s your opinion of having a side hustle with your main job?
I think it’s good to have a side hustle, but I don’t think it’s meant for everyone. Most people are pushed into having side hustles because their main job isn’t enough to cater to their financial obligations.
I advocate for having hobbies instead, but hobbies don’t pay bills, so there you have it. I don’t have one, and I honestly would prefer to have one job and other streams of income that don’t need me to ‘work.’ I guess this is why investment is very important to me.
What’s been your experience with investing?
I think I was 13 or 14 when I made my first investment. I had save up some money , honestly don’t know what I was even saving for. It was about N13k, so I gave it to my dad to buy shares in First Bank for me . I’m hindsight I probably should have spent it because the Naira has lost so much value since then and the dividends haven’t amounted to anything. Beyond that I’ve invested in Fixed income, I’ve invested in crypto, I have bought into mutual funds as well.
What do you prefer to invest in?
My most preferred type of investment is definitely Fixed Income. I’m naturally risk averse so I would much rather be certain that my capital won’t disappear. I think it’s important for people to do research into whatever they choose to invest in because there’s really no free money anywhere and also you should also invest what you won’t need for the longterm. It’s also important to diversify your investments, depending on how much liquidity you have.